House divided over immigration approach

By Jeremy Roebuck :
April 29, 2013
: Updated: April 29, 2013 9:36pm

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D.-Ill. (right), who is part of a group that is working to craft an immigration bill, was in San Antonio on Monday to discuss the effort. He appeared alongside fellow working group member John Carter, R-Round Rock, at several events. Local Democratic Reps. Lloyd Doggett, Joaquin Castro and Pete Gallego also were on hand.

An immigration overhaul bill has yet to hit the floor of the U.S. House, but a dispute over the best way to take on the complex reform effort already threatens to divide its members.

At a forum Monday in San Antonio, two key congressmen involved in drafting a comprehensive, bipartisan bill rejected calls from some Republican colleagues to take a more piecemeal approach. Their comments came three days after another group of legislators filed measures of their own proposing incremental tweaks to the immigration system.

The split over tactics underscores the battle looming in the sharply divided House, where an immigration overhaul in any form is likely to be a harder sell than in the Senate, which saw its own bipartisan, comprehensive bill filed earlier this month.

“You cannot do this piecemeal, or you won't reach any agreement,” said U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D.-Ill., a member of the House group working on the all-encompassing immigration package. “Otherwise, you'll get a lot of, 'If you don't include what's important to me, then I'm not going to vote for what's important to you.'”

Gutierrez spoke Monday in San Antonio as part of a whirlwind tour to sell his group's approach across the country. He appeared here alongside fellow working group member John Carter, R-Round Rock, and with area Democratic Reps. Lloyd Doggett, Joaquin Castro and Pete Gallego at separate events.

At each stop, he stressed that an overarching bill that tackles border security, the nation's visa system and legalizing the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants stood the best chance of passing the House.

“If we put one big bill together, I can compromise on specific sections knowing I will get what I want in other sections,” Carter said at a luncheon hosted by the National Immigration Forum.

Though Gutierrez and Carter's bipartisan group has toiled on their immigration reform bill for four years, a similar group in the Senate that unveiled its own blanket immigration package April 18 has largely overshadowed their efforts.

That proposal would allow the nation's undocumented immigrants to become citizens within 13 years, add $8.5 billion to further secure the nation's borders and fundamentally shift the nation's visa system to an emphasis on the nation's economic needs.

Whether it can pass the Senate floor remains to be seen, but the chamber has at least agreed that the discussion should be framed as an all-or-nothing debate.

In the House, however, a few legislators already have become impatient with the pace of their own group's efforts at bipartisanship.

On Friday, U.S. Reps. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, filed individual bills to implement a new guest-worker program and bolster an existing system that requires employers to check workers' legal status.

Goodlatte, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, which handles immigration-related bills, said he hoped to move the process forward and did not rule out folding his bill later into a comprehensive approach. But he added, “I would point out that the House bipartisan group has been negotiating it for about four years, so we want to see product from that group.”

Smith has ruled out voting for any proposal that includes a pathway to citizenship for the nation's undocumented and offered his bill to support the parts of the immigration reform measure his constituents would support.

“These proposals should not be held hostage to a political debate over amnesty for 11 million illegal immigrants,” he said Monday.

Gutierrez and Carter declined to discuss the details of the House group's comprehensive proposal — which they hope to file sometime next month — but said it includes a citizenship option for those who entered the country illegally, with a longer wait period and stiffer penalties than those outlined in the Senate bill.

They have received no assurances from House leadership that the chamber will proceed with their one-bill approach, Gutierrez said.

“I wouldn't have committed myself to this debate for this long,” he said, “if I didn't believe in good faith that this was the way the House was going.”